Courage in Full Color

But save for a cinematic footnote in 1949, the exploits of black soldiers like Stephenson have been missing in action on the big screen. In movie after movie -- "Saving Private Ryan," "Flags of Our Fathers," "Letters From Iwo Jima," "The Thin Red Line," "From Here to Eternity," "The Great Escape," "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "A Bridge Too Far," "Midway" -- there was hardly a black face upon the screen. By contrast, films inspired by Vietnam -- "Apocalypse Now," "Hamburger Hill" and "Platoon," to name just three -- featured integrated casts.

"You just came not to expect anything like that, films about us," Stephenson says.

A public brouhaha erupted at the Cannes Film Festival in May when director Spike Lee criticized Clint Eastwood for the underrepresentation of blacks in "Flags" and "Letters," both of which Eastwood directed. Eastwood, defending himself to London's Guardian, said there were no black soldiers involved in raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and that Lee "should shut his face." (Eastwood is correct about black soldiers not participating in the flag raising, but there were blacks on Iwo Jima who fought in the battle.)

"Blacks are not a part of the visual mythology of World War II," says Melton McLaurin, professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and writer-director of a recent PBS film about the first black Marines who served in the war. "The national imagery begins in the Second World War with figures like John Wayne and Robert Taylor in the movies. Those films dealt with the white man's role. And that's the iconography that came out of that period.

"What is unconscionable about these World War II films is where the directors knew about black soldiers' participation and chose not to tip their hat to them," he says. "Eastwood does acknowledge that blacks were on Iwo Jima, but you only see a couple black soldiers for about five seconds."

It will soon change.

Lee's World War II drama, "Miracle at St. Anna," opens on the big screen in September following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier in the month. It is based on James McBride's 2002 novel of the same name and chronicles the true-life adventures of Stephenson's 92nd Infantry.

And yet a World War II movie featuring black soldiers can hardly be just about war. The black soldier in World War II was engaged in two battles: proving his patriotism on the front lines and extracting dignity at home. Black Americans' experience of World War II featured heroism aplenty, but also race riots in half a dozen cities, marches upon the White House and the intervention of President and Mrs. Roosevelt on behalf of black soldiers. Even black heroes on the battlefield remained without honors for a long time.

"A lot of movie executives just didn't know the history," says Lee. "It never dawned on them that there was another component to the war."

Needed in War Effort

Even though blacks were treated as second-class citizens in the 1940s, the U.S. government considered their participation in the war effort important. The secretary of war had an aide for "Negro Affairs." There were also bond rallies, and black entertainers -- Lena Horne and Duke Ellington, among them -- were engaged to give patriotic speeches. Advertisements featuring black soldiers ran in black weekly newspapers.

Boxers Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson both reported for duty. The Army sent them on a nationwide tour chatting up black and white soldiers in an effort to promote racial harmony.

The gun in the hand of the black man, however, frightened many politicians.